In the state of the art, file shredders of the said construction, having an automatic paper intake for continuous intake of the material, are known in many different embodiments, e.g. a ripping machine according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,842,205, a paper shredder according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,893,759, a feed device for document shredders according to DE 36 14 028 C2, a shredding device according to DE 22 14 800 A, or a file shredder according to DE 10 2006 028 828 A1.
In the case of files held together with staples, if the staples have not been removed, too many sheets of paper can be drawn in during intake, for one thing, which cannot be shredded all at the same time by the device, and therefore cause jamming in the shaft or overloading of the cutting mechanism, with the consequence that the device, the file shredder, stops the shredding process; for another thing, a sheet of paper that has been drawn in can be pulled to the back by subsequent papers with staples, so that the file shredder either cannot draw the sheet of paper in correctly and therefore terminates the shredding process, or the sheet pulls in the sheets that are stapled together, thereby causing the paper to be jammed in the file shredder and causing the shredding process to be stopped.
Since, in a normal case, the sheets/papers to be shredded consist of stapled files, the staples usually have to be removed first, before the stack of sheets is laid into the file shredder for shredding.
On the one hand, removing the staples is time-consuming, but on the other hand, the stapled papers are not automatically shredded by every file shredder, particularly those in the lower price segment. Furthermore, persons who do not often operate the file shredder forget to remove the staples before placing the stack of papers on the paper deposit zone of the file shredder.